Peter was hungry. Like super hungry. Like I don't know who ate the last pack of gushers but whoever it was you're dead hungry. The pantry was bare, the fridge was bare, and no, Tony, a block of two month old manchego, an apple, and five billion different sauces cannot possibly be turned into a real, nutritious meal.

Granted, the compound brought in cooks for dinner most of the time, and this meant there were usually delicious leftovers in the fridge to sustain them, but they didn't compensate for the incessant needs of a chemically enhanced sixteen-year-old boy. A three course meal with a salmon filet scheduled at eight o'clock didn't change the fact that Peter was hungry right now, and after a lot of pestering and a little bit of bribery, Peter finally convinced someone to take him shopping. At least, that's how he found himself strolling through the never ending maze of Whole Foods with Captain America and the Winter Soldier.

Let him rephrase that. Steve and Bucky were strolling. Peter was riding, because what socially acceptable teenager doesn't ride on the back of the shopping cart when they go to the grocery store. It would be like refraining from popping bubble wrap when it came in the mail, or poking holes in the plastic around the soda packs that Tony always bought. Riding on the back of the shopping cart was a societal obligation.

Except that Peter didn't account for the fact that he had a significantly larger muscle mass than he used to. In fact, he denied it. It wasn't him that got bigger, it was the cart that got smaller. Whatever the truth was, when Peter stepped onto the back of the shopping cart to fly down the canned foods aisle like an assassin on a rampage (and okay, maybe he was mimicking Clint's concentration face, but that's only because it was hilarious) the cart decidedly did not agree with him.

"Ow, shit," he cursed as the cart fell, and inevitably, before he could even pick himself up off of the floor, he heard Steve's unmistakable voice from the aisle right next to him.

"Language!"

Of course. All he wanted was to ride the back of the grocery cart, and suddenly he's being scolded by a 100 year-old grandpa in a star spangled onesie for his bad mouth.

"Peter, you had one job. One. How did you manage to hurt yourself while trying to find discounted chicken noodle soup?" Steve was in his aisle now, helping him up from the floor. Damn his superhuman superspeed.

"We already have soup, we don't need more! And why do I have to get the cheap stuff anyway, don't we live with a billionaire?" Peter shot back. Steve gave an exasperated sigh.

"Okay, for one thing, ramen noodles do not count as real soup. And for the last time: the fact that Tony's a billionaire is irrelevant. It's just not polite. You can't - wait, were you trying to ride on the back of a shopping cart?" The beginning of Steve's impassioned rant on his cheap shopping habits was cut short.

That's when it happened. That's when a switch flipped. Suddenly, Steve wasn't someone who scolded Peter's language, or reminded him to take second helpings at dinner when he hadn't eaten for awhile. He wasn't the guy who 'checked' his homework despite not knowing what the hell it was talking about, or the guy who insisted on pulling out chairs for ladies and taking off hats when they enter the room. He had a look in his eye that reminded him of - well, him. Peter didn't know what to say, exceptL

"Well, yeah. I didn't think about being too heavy for the cart." He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. Steve must have been giving off some type of telepathic signal though, because Bucky was in their aisle seconds later, with the same expression on his face.

"Did I just hear what I think I heard, kid?" Now Peter was really confused, because nobody got this excited about shopping cart rides except for teenage boys, and they definitely weren't teenage boys anymore. But then Peter thought about it. Weren't they? Weren't they drafted when they were just a little bit older than Peter was now? And how soon after that did the whole going into the ice fiasco happen? Peter wasn't a scholar on the origins of Captain American, but it wasn't as if he lived to be a ripe old age before the crash.' They might technically be 100 years old, but did they ever really get to be kids?

So say what you will about Steve Rogers being old fashioned, and about Bucky Barnes never cracking a smile, but there Peter was, standing in an aisle of Whole Foods, with one Winter Soldier, one Captain America, three shopping carts, a lot of free space, and a hundred years worth of pent up childlike energy.

"Hey Buck," Steve said, turning his grin on his best friend. "You remember that day in the summer, when we went to Mr. Gambon's Grocery to get flour for your mom -"

"And we rode the carts -"

"And the flour -"

"Oh my God -"

"It went everywhere," they said in unison.

Suffice to say, two minutes later they rode the hell out of those carts. Straight through the produce section, into the bakery, down the frozen goods, and circling around the dairy to do it all again. Around and around they went, until on their third lap around the store, whooping and yelling, and cheering on Bucky because he had just officially won the unspoken who can pop the best wheelie competition, they ran right smack dab into the manager. Apparently, when you get multiple confused eyewitness accounts saying that Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and a sixteen year old boy with no regard for taking precautions in the fresh produce section flew by them on the back of some grocery carts, it's cause for investigation.

And maybe Peter was still hungry, but now he was sure about the fact that Steve and Bucky had been kids one time, a long time ago. And Peter couldn't fix everything, but after being escorted out and banned indefinitely from the local whole foods, he could confidently say that riding on the back of shopping carts was an adolescent obligation that would never go out of style. Not if they could help it.